In the 1970's, I was living for a time with a friend's family. It was R, his wife, his parents, his daughter and a young boy whose connection I don't recall, a very cool little man. I was the token Caucasian of the house. Many stories happened in this place. Half the time it was like living "Sanford and Son", sometimes it was "Soul Food". One time it was NYPD Blue, but not Murder One. It was never "Leave it to Beaver", though. One of the things it proved to me was that folks are pretty much the same at the kernel of their being. The rest is cultural.

I met a lot of diverse people from the area, none of them royalty, but many of them fit into the other categories I mention in my description of these memoirs. One of them was Snake, let's imagine a guy who looked something like Will Smith because that's how I remember him looking.

I used to put on my Dudley Do-Right voice when we joked about racial "differences", which we could do and did all the time, laughing and smiling. Snake asked me one day if I wanted to make some money. I didn't end up doing it, but his plan had to do with going in a bank and using my "white routine" referring to the voice among other things, to pass off a check or something like that. Probably just as well I passed up that opportunity, but Snake and everyone else I met was always cool to me. One day though, we went to a Black Muslim burger joint, and the people there were seriously saturated with hatred for "white folks". That day was an unforgettable lesson in what unbridled and unreasoning hatred feels like. An individual of whom you know nothing can not possibly deserve such hatred based on a prejudice against a group you somehow were taught. Racial hatred, religious hatred, hatred based on gender or sexuality, it's all basically wrong, period. You can't be an intelligent being and be into hating someone you do not know on the basis of what they believe (excluding the obvious of them wanting to exterminate you), where they come from, what color their skin is, how they talk, etc. The people I lived with were all kind to me, straight with me, cool with me in 1975. Yet in 2010, we see this resurfacing of hatred, not just discrimination, which is bad enough, but hatred.And in the guise of political agendas, it's that much uglier.

Snake had a proposition, but he never tried to hide the true nature or goals involved.

People, be suspicious of politicians whose agendas are always based on hate speak and innuendo. Politicians who want the job bad enough to purvey hatred don't care about your interests at all, only their own, and they will do anything to get the power and money they crave. Don't drink the koolaid.

Be skeptical of the media clowns, many of whom have openly admitted that they are entertainers in the competitive world of news-as-enertainment. They make no bones about the provocation they enact, it's just a part of their act, like Lenny Bruce used to do. Unfortunately, Lenny Bruce was provocative, yes, but he never incited anyone to violence or hatred, only a mild derision meant to make you think about things in a new light.

Whether it's politicians or media clowns you're listening to, try to think - what is it this person is after, exactly? A better world for you and me, or their own career advancement at any price?

I recall being recruited to play in a band up in Fresno while living in Newport Beach (or was it Costa Mesa? I've lived in both.) I asked the singer if it was more like southern or northern California. He said northern, which is true to some extent. Fresno was a funky place in the way I would say Seattle is a funky place, in a good way. I've lived in Seattle, too. Great place!
 
I was renting a place two blocks from the gig, rooming with a fellow band member. It featured a railroad triage yard  about 1 block away. I recall the rent was $80 a month. This was a while back :) I discovered that even the noise of crashing freight cars in the middle of the night is a sound you get used to and can sleep though. I also met a friend I still love dearly who lived next door. He cooked dinner for the two of us 5 nights a week for $1 each. These were good times.
 
One night in Ara's Apartments, the bar I played in 6 nights a week, someone was buying us round after round of tequila shots. I was pretty hammered and John had snagged a woman to spend the night with, so as I left, Brady, the rent a cop at the door said "Careful, there's a lot of new boys on the force out there". I do not condone drunk driving, so I too found myself a friend named Eileen and headed home.
 
When blonde Eileen and I walked in the door, it was obvious that anything of value had been stolen. Tape recorded, studio equipment, an old amp, stuff like that. There was also something written in lipstick on the mirror: "SMACK, i.e., the Kiss!". We probably waiting until the next day to call the police and they made much of the mirror writing, but we later found out it was John's ex-girlfriend Kay, who had left town. It was in fact, unrelated to the theft.
 
A few days later, I ran into a different, brunette Eileen I had known for a while in Ara's. As we left that night, she told me she had a motel room nearby and since she didn't want to disturb her roomate, why didn't we go over there? Well, sure, so we did. And as I opened the door, here was all my stolen equipment! The room was rented by a local thug, Eileen obviously didn't know anything about the theft or she would not have brought me over there. I chose not to pursue the thing because of the Fresno society of which I was a fringe member. You see, the "thug" and a large number of other shady people used to use Ara's as a place to go make drug deals. The owners and the cops had to be in on the whole thing.
 
Several months later, I brought an old girlfriend up there to live with me. Later still, I left and she stayed and got even more entrenched in the "scene" with hookers, drugs and who knows what else. She worked as a bartender at Ara's. One night, she saw two guys walk in, go right to the poolroom and blow away the owner of the place. Scratch that. Here's the eyewitness account from Mark's book:

It was 6:30 p.m., and the bar was empty when two men walked in. They looked to be from out of town, something in their fringed leather jackets and gloves. They ordered two draft beers and headed to the back room to play pool. Just across the way was my father's office, the door open. He was sitting at his desk working on the quarterly taxes. They played a game of eight ball and walked out.

Ten minutes passed and the two men walked back in. The place was still empty. Lewis asked if they wanted another beer. One of the men gave her an odd look, and the other headed straight back to the office and began shooting. My father fought back with everything he had. It took both gunmen to bring him down.

 

She was the only witness to the event and she was either smart enough to duck behind the bar and disappear, or maybe she knew somehow she was not in danger. The crime was never solved.
 
Ara's son Mark, who we saw as a little boy once in a while, became a reporter at the L.A. Times and wrote a book about the whole Fresno context of the time, called  In My Father's Name